Tench Fishing in Australia.

I caught my first Australian tench from a blink and you’ll miss it pond, sandwiched between a sports oval and a community centre.   No more than four people could fish at this venue at any one time, and then two would have to share a grassy bank space with the locals that come to feed the ducks and misidentify the other wildfowl that call the pond home. Its waters were dark and stained, its banks lined with invasive willow and brambles.

I lost two more fish that day to a snag I later discovered was a flat screen TV, disposed of to avoid tip fees or dumped after a robbery.   

That first tench was as small as the water it came from, probably less than 2lb.  It fell to a single grain of corn, fished under a small waggler, and the bite was a classic; the float dipped slightly, rose a couple of inches and then disappeared.  Before the fish broke the surface of the water, I remember wondering out loud if it was green.  It was, and the smile it generated was probably larger than the fish itself.  In almost all other circumstances it would have been an unremarkable fish really; but for me, it was the start of my Australian tench fishing journey.

A week later I returned to the same venue and caught a tench for an audience of duck feeders, who asked the two questions that have become part and parcel of tench fishing in Australia.  1. What type of fish is that?  And 2. Can you eat it?

The first question is understandable, as tench are essentially unknown to most Australians, the second less so.  The fish came from a water that looked far more likely to be a source of lasting illness or infectious disease than dinner, so I was bewildered by the apparent willingness to eat it.  The audience were equally bewildered when I simply returned the fish to the water and carried on with my morning.

I did not know it at the time, but several of the core aspects of Tench Fishing in Australia were captured in those first two outings; public bewilderment, strange bankside finds and more tench than I imagined possible being not the least of these.

Neither I nor tench are native to Australia, we both arrived here from the UK.  I arrived 30 years ago, and the tench arrived in the 1890s via New Zealand.  I came to Australia willingly, but like many other early colonists, the tench were transported, presumably against their will.  Now, both I and the tench reside in South Eastern Australia.

Tench were introduced first into Tasmania, followed by Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, where they established self-sustaining populations.  However, since the rapid spread of carp into many water ways in the 1970s, both the abundance and distribution of tench have declined significantly.  Although there may be untapped tench potential remaining in Tasmania, Victoria is now the centre of Tenchdom in Australia.    

That being said, tench venues are not that abundant in Victoria either, and are concentrated in the slightly elevated area known as The Gold Fields about 1 ½ hours from Melbourne. The quest to find and access new venues is an ongoing project. This task is not helped by the utterly niche nature of Australian coarse fishing, and the ever more niche nature of tench fishing itself. 

In general, the only way to really find out if there are tench in a water is to fish it.  While there may be some information about venues on the internet, most of it is unreliable and almost all of it old. It’s a bit like ‘you will hear of tench and rumours of tench’ but the only way to be sure, is to fish for tench.

The waters near Melbourne that contain tench fall into two broad categories, still water reservoirs or dams (‘dam’ is a general Australian term for an agricultural water source) and slow-moving rivers.  The still waters vary greatly in size, but almost always contain weed beds and other features beloved of tench.  The rivers tend to resemble canals, and the most productive way to fish these seems to be tight to weed beds or fringing reeds on the far bank.  In this regard I think that Australian tench betray their heritage by living in places that knowledgeable anglers worldwide would describe as a ‘tenchy’. 

Most tench-fishers in Australia are ex-pat Poms who arrived in Australia for a variety of commercial, domestic or romantic reasons. As far as I know none of the anglers I fish with were transported for sealing bread or nicking the Lord of the Manor’s Pig, the type of actions that previously resulted in a short trip to court followed by a longer trip to Australia.  I suspect that this clean criminal record is product of timing rather than an endorsement of the morality of some of the people I meet on the bank!   Most of us cut our fishing teeth on red-topped floats, small local waters and tench fishing that starting on the morning of the 16th of June and seemed to end a fortnight earlier.  Some of us still hold resentful thoughts towards those in Yorkshire that were allowed to start two weeks before that hallowed date. 

I probably fished in the UK for a little more than 10 years. Between my pre-teens and early 20s would have called myself an angler. I caught a small number of tench, from an equally small number of venues in Somerset, and any day that contained a tench was a highlight.  You could replace ‘tench’ in the preceding sentence with almost any species name you liked, and if the truth be told replacing it with the word ‘fish’ would hardly be untrue. I fished at a time when the hair rig was still secret, or at least controversial, and ‘commercials’ were things you watched on ITV.   Despite moving away from fishing as a lifestyle, the pull of tackle shops and allure of productive looking waters never entirely faded.  The hypnotic, rhythmic solitude of fishing entered my DNA as a teenager and became dormant in adulthood.  It was just waiting for an opportunity to re-express itself.

The small tench from the small water was that opportunity.

Given the ancestry of both tench pursuers and their quarry it no surprise that tench fishing in Australia looks a lot like tench fishing in the UK.  But there are key differences and a few similarities.  

Probably the most obvious difference is the time of year when tench feed.  In the Australia spring starts in late September and Autumn ends in early June.  This year I caught my first tench in the second week of September, or 10 weeks after ‘mid winter’.  This would equate to late February or early March in the UK.  You can expect to catch until at least the end of March or the start of April – but my data set on these dates is very limited.  However, one thing is clear; with a little planning an angler who travelled between England and Australia could catch tench all year round!

Another clear difference is the availability of tackle and bait.

The eye watering level of choice offered to UK anglers simply does not exist in Australia.  Although the situation is improving for coarse fishers here, local tackle and bait sources are highly dependent on single companies or individuals, and these come and (often) go with depressing regularity.  Suitable terminal tackle can be bought online from the UK, but the shipping costs for larger items, such as rods or pole, are often prohibitive.  Any form of bait – think specialist ground baits, pellets, wafters etc – ordered from overseas must run the gauntlet of customs and quarantine and are often barred from entering the country. 

I suppose the method that the bait issues impact most dramatically would be the use of maggot feeders.  Watching instructional videos on YouTube where people arrive on the bank with multiple pints of maggots (not to mention pots of casters and bags of worms) is sure to induce jealously in Australian tenchers. As far as I am aware there is only a single reliable commercial source of maggots in Australia, and while the maggots are good quality, they are very expressive in comparison to the UK.  A long session using two maggot feeders with regular casting would probably need to be preceded by a visit to a mortgage broker.   Home breeding of maggots is the solution used by some anglers, but of course not everyone can blow their own bait in the back yard.  And it not a lack of flies that is the key issue faced by home breeders!  As a result, ‘supermarket’ baits such as bread and corn are commonly used, supplemented by whatever ‘exotic’ baits and feeds people can get their hands on.

Another clear difference is the amount and type of bankside company an Australian tencher can expect.  Without prior planning it would be unusual to meet another tench fisher on the bank, and while a little bit of peace and quiet is great, a bit of company can also be a good thing. If you ran a tench-fishers BBQ in Melbourne, it would be a small affair and most people would probably already know each other.

The wildlife you meet on the bank is also rather different.  Although they are not as common as some people would have you believe, there are considerably more snakes, spiders, scorpions and other things that sting in Australia than in the UK.  Thankfully, given my position in SE Australia I don’t have to deal with crocodiles (yet!).  Just to add spice to the wildlife list you may also be joined on the bank by platypus – the world’s only venomous mammal -  rikali, a type of water rat with golden belly fur, a white tip to its tail and excellent whiskers – which is the closest animal Australia has to an otter – and kangaroos of a couple of species.  Kookaburras laugh at you from the treetops and swans are black.  Biologically, it really is a different world here.

Although I may be reflecting what I thought I knew about tench in the 1980s (which was basically very little!) I remained surprised at how willing tench are to feed beyond the classic dawn and dusk periods of the day.  It is not unusual to still be catching tench between 11am and 3 pm, a time slot that would have seen Mr Crabtree and Peter back at home drinking tea and eating toast. 

In terms of tactics and approaches, it’s no surprise that tench fishing in Australia relies on a similar methods to the UK.  On dams and reservoirs, I tend to fish simple running cage feeder rigs, and on the smaller waters, especially the canal-like rivers, I tend to fish the pole or the waggler.  Most of the time this means I fish the feeder, casting up next to weed beds and other likely looking features, often at short range 

My feeder rig of choice is simplicity itself – a free-running feeder, stopped above a four inch twizzled boom by two long float stops.  Main line is either 8lb or 6lb sinking mono, to a short hook length with a 14 barbless hook.  For bite indication with this rig I use bobbins with a simple buzzer.  Rods are 11ft 4inch, 1.25 test which were built by the late Terry Eustace over 45 years ago.  One was a 16th birthday present, and I have no real idea where I found the money for the second one.  These rods are paired with 4000 size Shimano bait-runners.  Initially I used Mitchell 300s, but the convenience of a line clip and free spool function won me over to the somewhat more modern reels. 

It’s reasonable to say that this set up is not typical of the ones you would see on Australia tench waters, where what few tenchers there are seem to favour the pole, waggler or quiver tip options.  They may have a point if I was only interested in catching fish at any cost – but for me, the excitement of a bobbin sliding upwards towards the rod is worth any slight reduction in the bite to fish ratio.  As a kid I read the Coarse Fisherman like a holy text and made ‘Open Spool Windbeater’ bite indicators from plastic tubes cut from washing-up bottles that (occasionally) slid up the knitting needles that were pushed into the ground below the reels.  In many ways, my current approach is as much a homage to those lost Somerset summers as it is a response to the unique nature of Australia.  Luckily for me, I still manage to catch a few fish.

The tench in Australia do not seem to grow as large as those in the UK, and my largest fish so far weighted in is an ounce shy of six pounds.  I have seen one fish over the six pound mark, and have heard stories of much larger fish.  Call me a cynic, but I tend to place the ‘giant tench’ stories that circulate – generally without supporting pictures or witnesses – into the same category as the Loch Ness monster and the genuinely free lunch.  However, I live in hope.

November 28th 2026; 7:30 am

The sun has risen but the light remains golden soft.  Two Black Swans feed their five grey cygnets in the margins.  A large dragonfly hangs dew damp on a blade of grass.  Sacred Kingfishers argue loudly over territorial rights.  The water is mirror calm but gives off whisps of mist to the cooler air above it.  At dawn it may be late spring or early summer, but later in the day it will be hot enough to put this question beyond doubt.

I set up my usual two rods, fishing is a swim I have fished before: a bay in the weeds, half natural, half manmade.  Beyond a narrow marginal shelf, the water drops steeply to eight or nine feet, and then stays more or less that depth to the edge of sensible casting range.  The weeds grow on the sloping area until the water becomes too deep for them.  I cast one rod short, on to the bottom of the slope and the other a little further to the deeper water. I throw three balls of ground bait mixed with spun corn and liquidised bread to the short line.  Three large feeders full of a similar mixture drop over the longer line.

With rods cast and bobbins set I pour myself my first bankside tea of the day.  This first cup is a ritual marking the transition from preparation to fishing.  Within a few minutes I notice movement in the margins just under my rod tip and find a tench feeding in the very margins.  Cautiously I flick out some corn and a pinch of maggots.  Initially both are ignored, but slowly the fish moves over the baited area.  I gently retrieve one of the rods, unclip the feeder and put four maggots on to the hook, flick the almost freeline rig out near the fish and wait.  The bunch of maggots is clearly visible on the gravel bottom.  The tench swims over them, upends slightly and the maggots disappear.  My line twitches away and I strike.  A few minutes later the first fish of the day is in the landing net, resting prior to release.  The whole sequence from first proper cast to returning the fish took less than five minutes.  My cup of tea is still warm.  As there are no signs of other fish in the margins I return to my two feeder lines.

After about 40 minutes the bobbin on the closer line twitches and slides confidently towards the rod – fish number two comes to the net and is significant enough for me to weigh it – just over 5 pounds.  Seconds before I release that fish, the second rod screams off in a classic bite.  I strike, settle the landing net in the margin and play the second smaller fish to the bank.  It joins its larger brother in the landing net. I photograph them before for releasing both of them.  I pour some tea and wait awhile before recasting.

I catch regularly throughout the morning, and land 20 fish in total for the day.

Each fish brings a feeling of rose-tinted nostalgia seasoned with sense of disbelief that such days are possible.  Long may they continue.

SM

(This article is the result of being contacted by the Tench Fishers, a UK based group that specialises in fishing for tench (!), to write about the little known tench fishing community in Australia.  Of course, I was pleased to oblige.  SM)